Doctor cleared of sexually assaulting five male patients in his surgery

Dr Bharat Shikotra

A doctor has been cleared of sexually assaulting five male patients in his surgery.

Dr Bharat Shikotra stood trial three times facing the same allegations, within almost two years, before finally clearing his name.

Two earlier juries in trials, in January 2014 and January this year, both failed to reach verdicts

When the third jury acquitted him of any sexual impropriety against the patients today (Weds), Judge Simon Hammond told Dr Shikotra: “You can leave the court with your good character and reputation intact.”

He told the jury at Leicester Crown Court: “I can now tell you that two earlier juries could not reach any verdicts.

“This matter should have been dealt with by the General Medical Council (GMC) if they thought something wasn’t quite right.

“It’s taken a long time.

“I’m pleased that justice has been done.

“It was very serious for the doctor whose professional life and liberty were on the line.”

Dr Shikotra, of Elmsleigh Avenue, Leicester, denied the charges, insisting he had acted professionally and appropriately.

He was cleared by the jury of four women and eight men, of two sexual assaults and three counts of assault by penetration.

He was acquitted, on the judges direction, of another sexual assault part way through the trial, when the prosecution offered no evidence on that allegation.

The six alleged offences related to five male patients who claimed that he sexually assaulted them during intimate medical examinations, between 2009 and 2012.

Dr Shikotra (54), who is married, denied any wrongdoing and explained, when giving evidence, that the medical examinations he carried out were necessary, appropriate and not gratuitous.

At the time of the allegations he was working as a GP at the Saffron Surgery at 612 Saffron Lane, Leicester, but has since retired.

After the verdicts were announced he politely declined to comment.

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London: An Indian-origin doctor in the British city of Leicester has been charged with sexually assaulting a patient on a medical bed, a court heard.

Bharat Shikotra, 52, allegedly touched the patient`s private parts and the assault continued for 20 minutes as he “carried out an examination” at Saffron Lane Health Centre in the city Sep 7, 2012, the Leicester Mercury reported Thursday.

However, Shikotra, a married man, denied the charges in the Leicester crown court.
The patient told the court that Shikotra, who took over charge from a retiring colleague in early 2012, questioned him about his homosexuality in several appointments and asked if he had been on “gay websites” seeking a partner.

He said that there was no assistant present in the chamber at that time and the doctor was not wearing surgical gloves.

The patient told the court that Shikotra seemed “obsessed” about information about his private parts.

The victim said that eventually he agreed to a check-up but alleged that Shikotra started “massaging” him intimately and he felt nervous.
“He (the doctor) asked me what turns me on at home,” the victim said.

“I realised by then what I should have realised way before – that what he was doing was wrong,” he added.

The victim alleged that he did not know what to do.

The accuser said, after leaving the doctor`s chamber “in a daze”, he confided in his sister.

Defence counsel Andrew Hockton, however, accused the alleged victim of “telling lies” and said his allegations were “pure fantasy”.

Hockton said the doctor never made inappropriate comments and carried out “an appropriate medical examination” following a request by the patient.

The complainant reported the matter to a primary care trust three weeks later.

“There was not a single entry (in the medical records) about the examination, what he had done or what he found when he did the examination,” Claire Howell, prosecutor said.

“If a doctor was conducting a legitimate examination, why is not there a record of it in his notes,” the prosecutor asked.

Tribunal rejects Indian doctor’s race discrimination claim against NHS Tayside
by Andrew ArgoJuly 22 2014, 9.47amUpdated: April 20 2016, 5.13am
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A consultant psychiatrist from India was not racially discriminated against when NHS Tayside terminated his contract without explanation.

An employment tribunal in Dundee found that Dr AK Sen Gupta’s superior acted unreasonably by not giving full reasons for dispensing with his services.

The health authority argued that the behaviour did not establish discrimination, however, and the tribunal concluded that Dr Gupta’s Indian race was not a factor in his contract being ended.

The tribunal, chaired by judge Ian McFatridge, heard that Dr Gupta was enlisted by NHS Tayside as a locum consultant in 2010 to cover a vacancy in general adult psychiatry for the Arbroath and Carnoustie Community Mental Health Team.
He had come to the UK to make money as a result of having to rebuild his property in India, but concerns arose about his way of working.

Evidence was heard that be lacked knowledge of patients he had recently seen, did not seem to know the names of his colleagues and he scheduled additional clinics over and above those in his timetable.

Junior doctors complained about a lack of guidance from him and he seemed to have a problem with urgent referrals.

Dr Gupta also had his secretary type his personal letters one to the Queen and one to the Prime Minister on NHS Tayside-headed notepaper in work time.

He also asked her to make personal arrangements for him in relation to a holiday, and she felt uncomfortable about being asked to do these things.

A problem also arose about him being charged for his living accommodation at Ninewells Hospital while he made a trip back to India.

He had apparently not understood that he should have cleared the flat and returned his keys while he was away.

A meeting was held to address various issues but the tribunal noted that Dr Gupta and his superior Dr Roger Blake, the lead clinician for general adult psychiatry in Angus, left with differing views of the outcome.

Dr Gupta wrote to Gerry Marr, then chief executive of NHS Tayside, with a series of complaints about the accommodation and services, and claimed support from a number of colleagues.

Mr Marr’s director of operations replied but Dr Gupta wrote back repeating his criticism.

The operations director then received a letter from two doctors at the Ninewells residence dissociating themselves from Dr Gupta’s comments and accusing him of misrepresenting their sentiments.

Relationships with Dr Gupta deteriorated and Dr Blake came to the view that his engagement as a locum was no longer tenable.

He understood, after discussing the situation with the HR department, that there was no obligation on NHS Tayside to provide reasons for terminating the engagement.

He called Dr Gupta to a meeting on May 6 2011 to tell him his contract was over.

He was replaced as a locum by a Dr Chandrasekhar, who is Indian, and a Dr Shill, who is American.

Dr Gupta accused NHS Tayside of race discrimination but looking at the case as a whole the tribunal could not see anything from which they could infer that motive.

Negligent Indian doctor gets jail for death of UK mom

London, May 27: An Indian doctor, who failed to carry out proper checks on an otherwise healthy 37-year-old mother who died after coming to hospital with a kidney infection, has been suspended from his duties in Bradford and sent to prison for two years.

The judge said it was extremely rare for a doctor to be convicted of gross negligence manslaughter.

Sudhanshu Garg, 44, a consultant urologist who got his MBBS from the University of Delhi in 1991 before coming to the UK, was today led out of the dock at Leeds Crown Court to begin his sentence.

All his post-qualification training was in the UK and he got his first consultant’s job in Bradford in 2006.

Indian doctors in the UK generally enjoy a good reputation but this is clearly an exception.

The court heard how Lisa Quinn died at Bradford Royal Infirmary on Monday August 25, 2008 — three days after she went into the accident and emergency department suffering from a kidney infection. She was admitted to hospital on a Friday and her condition deteriorated over the Bank Holiday weekend.

This case seems to stand up a common complaint that patients receive relatively inferior treatment at weekends when the most experienced doctors and medical staff are off duty.

Garg has admitted gross negligence manslaughter. He has not helped his own cause by trying to falsify the patient’s medical records in an attempt to get himself off the hook.

The case against him seems to be that he simply wasn’t up to his job and did not perform the routine checks he should have done. It may be that Garg was advised that by pleading guilty he would attract a more lenient sentence but the opposite seems to have happened.

Mr Justice Globe told Garg that he had no choice but to send him to prison.

“Your plea means that your breach of duty was causative of Lisa Quinn’s death and cumulatively it amounts to a disturbing picture of a failure to take action,” the judge commented.

He said that if Garg had performed his duties correctly “the overwhelming probability is that she could have survived”.

The court heard how Quinn was not given a crucial ultrasound scan until two days after she arrived at the hospital and Garg missed vital opportunities to properly investigate what was developing into a life-threatening infection and blockage.

On the Sunday evening, Garg also missed a chance for Quinn to be transferred for emergency treatment. She eventually got the nephrostomy treatment she needed on the Monday evening but by then it was too late and she died shortly afterwards.

The judge described how Garg falsified Quinn’s medical records as “a blatant attempt to disguise and conceal evidence of your failures”.

Mark Ellison QC, defending, told the court that Garg was now a “broken man”.

Quinn’s children — Reece Conroy, now 16, and Rachel Conroy, 14 — said in a statement: “We both miss our wonderful and loving mum every single day. We adored her and she adored us. She was always there for us and used to have us in stitches with her funny jokes and stories. She was caring and thoughtful and a mum in a million.”

Dr Raj Mattu was sacked after warning that patients were dying because of cost-cutting practices at a Coventry hospital. Photograph: Richard Saker/Guardian

The NHS has come under growing criticism in recent years over its treatment of whistleblowers – staff who raise concerns about poor care or inadequate patient safety.

Here we highlight four cases, including two that led directly to Sir Robert Francis QC undertaking his inquiry, published on Wednesday, into the health service’s handling of such cases.

Dr Raj Mattu
In April 2001 Dr Raj Mattu and five colleagues sounded the alarm about what they said was the dangerous “five in four” practice at Walsgrave hospital in Coventry of putting a fifth bed in a bay of a cardiac ward only designed to take four. Their concerns – that the practice would leave vital services such as oxygen, suction and mains electricity harder to reach in the event of an emergency – seemed to be borne out when a patient suffered a heart attack and died after staff could not reach that equipment in time. But that produced no changes.
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Those concerns led to a chain of events which ended with the consultant cardiologist’s sacking by University hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS trust in 2010. But an employment tribunal in April ruled that Mattu had been unfairly dismissed. His former NHS trust had spent £6m pursuing about 200 allegations against him – which later proved to be false – including using private detectives to investigate him. His lawyer, Stephen Moore, said Mattu had been “vilified, bullied and harassed out of a job he loved”.

He was one of the six health professionals turned whistleblowers whose terrible experiences after speaking out prompted Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, to ask Francis to look into how to create a more open culture within the NHS.
Dr David Drew
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Dr David Drew, a former consultant paediatrician at Walsall Manor hospital. Photograph: Adam Gerrard
Dr David Drew
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A former clinical director of Walsall Manor hospital, Dr David Drew was dismissed in December 2010 after voicing concerns about what he said was a huge cost-cutting exercise. The consultant paediatrician, a Christian, fell foul of his trust after including a biblical reference in an email to several fellow doctors as part of an attempt to lift their spirits.

He was ultimately sacked for “gross misconduct and insubordination” after he refused to accept the findings of a review panel that investigated his behaviour. The email was a smokescreen to justify getting rid of him, Drew said.

But in 2013 an employment tribunal rejected his appeal against his dismissal and his claim that he was the victim of religious discrimination.

“My case is the exact opposite of the transparency that’s being called for in the NHS today. We have to give doctors and nurses freedom to safely report when they see things going wrong and putting patients at risk,” Drew has said.

Writing in the Guardian last week, Drew – another of the six whistleblowers whose fate led to the Francis inquiry – said: “Variable, substandard and sometimes abysmal care is still all too common. In hospitals where frontline staff attempt to address this they are often met with a wall of silence and hostility by management. This was our own experience.”

Dr Narinder Kapur was sacked as head of neuropsychology at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge in 2010 after an irreconcilable breakdown in relationships. He had raised concerns about staff shortages and unqualified staff working without proper supervision. An employment tribunal ruled in 2012 that Kapur had been unfairly dismissed, but not because he was a whistleblower, although the tribunal recognised him as such. It ruled that the Cambridge University hospitals NHS foundation trust had “not conducted itself as a reasonable employer” because it did not explore alternatives to dismissing him. After losing his job he suffered serious financial problems and had to sell his house. The tribunal ruled that accusations of fraud against Kapul were unfounded and that he was a man “of the highest integrity”.
Dr Sharmila Chowdury
Radiographer Dr Sharmila Chowdury was suspended by Ealing hospital trust in west London after raising concerns in 2007 that colleagues were moonlighting at a nearby private hospital, a practice that was costing the NHS trust an estimated £250,000.

Despite winning her case at an interim relief tribunal in 2010, the trust refused to take her back. Chowdhury, was who diagnosed with cancer in 2013, has not worked in the NHS since then, despite having worked in the service for 27 years before her suspension. She has spent more than £130,000 in legal fees pursuing her case.

“Despite winning a hearing in which I was proven to be a whistleblower, I’ve no job and no money,” she said in an interview last year.

• This article was amended on 24 February 2015 to clarify that an employment tribunal ruled that Dr Narinder Kapur had not been dismissed from Addenbrooke’s hospital because he was a whistleblower. A misspelling of Dr Kapur’s name has also been corrected.

A cardiologist has revealed he was smeared by NHS bosses and left with his career in ruins after he spoke publicly about dangerous overcrowding at a hospital.

Doctor Raj Mattu, who has been left with a £1.4million legal bill following the dispute, has warned against whistleblowing as he revealed the shocking practices he reported at Walsgrave hospital in Coventry still haven’t been investigated.

In this interview, the 56-year-old describes the ‘terrible’ and ‘humiliating’ experience of being labelled a sexual pervert by bosses desperate to quash his claims as he reveals his life will never be the same.

Doctor Raj Mattu has a blackboard in his loo that says: ‘Now is the time to open some champagne and dance on the table.’

Too true, you might think. For last week, this brilliant cardiologist, who was sacked and vilified by health chiefs for 15 years after exposing shocking NHS failings, won an eye-watering £1.22 million damages in a dramatic victory for free speech.

Finally, it seemed, the once internationally renowned doctor, whose name was dragged through the mud by bosses at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (formerly Walsgrave Hospital), had cause for celebration.

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Dr Raj Mattu, pictured with his wife Sangita, has revealed how he was smeared by NHS bosses after he publicly revealed he was concerned about patient safety at Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry

But when we meet at his modest Warwick home, Dr Mattu, 56, is in no mood to pop champagne corks. Neither is his wife Sangeeta, 43. For the career at which Dr Mattu excelled, as a heart clinician and respected academic, is over. He was suspended after speaking out on overcrowding on Walsgrave Hospital’s wards, which he said led to the death of two patients.

Now, given the trust’s refusal to reinstate him and bring him up to speed on the strides that have been made in his field during his lengthy suspension — a so-called ‘re-skilling’, required by the NHS — an employment tribunal was forced to suggest he take up a post as a science teacher.

Add to this the fact that once he pays the £1.4 million bills he has run up fighting a trust that threw £10 million of taxpayers’ money at the case, he will be £200,000 in debt.

A victory? It is, as he says, a hollow one. ‘Even now the deaths I reported have never been investigated and I’ve been left worse than penniless,’ he says. ‘My career as a doctor is over.

‘If I were able to work in the job I’ve loved since qualifying, I’d roll up my sleeves and work to clear my debts, but I can’t because I’ve been robbed of that opportunity.

‘The Government says it wants to protect whistleblowers, but what they’ve come up with is wholly inadequate. If I’d had children to support would I have put my head above the parapet? I can’t say I would.

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The 56-year-old, pictured on his wedding day, went public about overcrowding after the death of two patients at the hospital

‘As things stand, I’d strongly caution anyone against whistleblowing to save them from suffering what my family have had to endure.’

Dr Mattu is not a man given to hyperbole. His chilling words echo the sentiments of a panel of senior doctors who this week condemned NHS treatment of whistleblowers.

In a letter to the Times, Professor Sir Brian Jarman, former head of the British Medical Association, called for reform of whistleblower protection, saying that despite a year passing since the landmark report which ruled whistleblowers would be protected from discrimination, not one healthcare worker sacked for speaking out has been found comparable NHS re-employment.

This appalling state affairs is borne out in Dr Mattu’s case. Before going public in 2001 with his concerns about patient safety at Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, following two deaths, he had a glittering future ahead of him.

When he was headhunted to work at the hospital in 1997 he was credited with being the first person to report a common mutation in the gene that protects against heart disease and acquired £2.5 million in grants to fund his 12-man research team.

Life, as he says, was good. With his £70,000 salary there were ski holidays, romantic breaks, meals at restaurants, a Mercedes with personalised number-plates, a £600,000 house in Solihull and savings in the bank. Today, he doesn’t have two brass farthings to rub together and is mortgaged to the hilt.

‘This has had a terrible effect on my private life,’ he says. ‘It’s put everything on hold. It’s prevented us from enjoying things we should have enjoyed long ago — marriage [he and Sangeeta eventually wed in 2009], children, the normal activities of life.

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Dr Mattu pictured after blowing the whistle on the NHS failures. He was later labelled a pervert and rapist by bosses

‘When I was suspended in 2002, Warwick University decided to stop my research, too.’

He can’t keep the tears from his eyes as he says: ‘Without the trust taking me back and reskilling me, I can’t work as a doctor. No other NHS trust is going to pay for that, particularly with all the smears around me.’

Dr Mattu’s lawyer claims he has faced no fewer than 200 absurd and invented allegations levelled by the trust since speaking out, claims that ranged from bullying and fraud to the completely unsubstantiated allegation of rape — all so groundless that, astonishingly, to this day, he has never been shown details about his so-called crimes.

He says the police have dismissed the claims with scorn.

Yet before blowing the whistle he’d never had a whisper of complaint against him since he qualified at University College London in 1984.

‘But then we didn’t have trusts or managers in charge,’ he says. ‘At Walsgrave there were more managers knocking around than doctors.

‘Half the time I couldn’t work out what most of them were meant to be doing. I remember asking for a stapler because my secretary’s had broken and we couldn’t order it. It took them five months to get one.

‘The trust had glorified administrators with grand titles and limited knowledge of healthcare. The director of medical staffing used to be a telephonist when I was a junior doctor and the director of clinical governance — patient safety — used to be a porter.’

Patient safety was Dr Mattu’s greatest concern. A Labour government drive to cut waiting lists, under the Health Secretary Alan Milburn, prompted a management decision to cram five beds into four-bed bays.

Not only was movement around the beds been restricted, but emergency equipment — oxygen, suction, defibrillation — was installed to service only four beds, not a fifth under a window.

It was, says Dr Mattu, ‘a time bomb’. He and fellow consultants voiced concerns on numerous occasions with everyone from his line managers to chief executive David Loughton, but the practice continued.

‘I knew the moment someone became acutely unwell we wouldn’t be able to do anything,’ he says. ‘One morning my worst fear was realised.’

Dr Mattu was on the ward on December 21, 1999, when a cardiac arrest alarm sounded. He hurried to a bay to find a 35-year-old man slipping out of consciousness.

What happened next is so terrible it continues to haunt him.

‘Normally we take off the bed’s head so we can get round the patient to put lines in the blood vessels and a tube in the lungs. But we couldn’t move the bed forwards because it kept hitting the two other beds.

‘At that time he was pink and warm. I was trying to do all the stuff we normally do. Then, he starts going blue in front of my eyes, bleeding in the gut and vomiting. We try to put the heart-tracing machine on, but we’ve got nowhere to plug it. We’re jumping up and down trying to keep this young guy alive. I use a piece of apparatus to expose his airway and, bang, I’m staring at a huge clot. I ask the nurses for suction. I put out my free hand. No suction. Where’s the suction?

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Dr Mattu racked up £1.4 million bills fighting the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, which will not reinstate him

‘The suction tube is a certain length and it’s by another patient’s bed and won’t reach. So then I’m desperately trying to grab the clot with forceps, but they won’t reach.

‘I’m thinking “If I push it down far enough, sacrifice one lung, we can give him oxygen and save him”, but we can’t get the oxygen to him either.

‘I ask a nurse to go to the theatre to get a portable oxygen canister. This guy is now blue and his heart’s stopped. I ask for the defibrillator, but the wires won’t reach.

‘I had to make a decision to wedge the clot down, but we had to wait five minutes before the portable oxygen came, by which time he’s so oxygen-deficient there’s probably very little to retrieve even if we had kept him alive.’ He shakes his head.

Within three weeks there was a second death, again in an over-crowded bay. The management’s response was to put an extension lead on the cardiac arrest trolley.

In February 2000, Health Secretary Alan Milburn boasted to the Commons: ‘The in-patient waiting list is 87,000 below the level we inherited.’

Dr Mattu says: ‘Hospital chief executive David Loughton was oiling the machine for his government paymasters, so Alan Milburn could go on air and say what a wonderful man he was reducing waiting lists. He was railroading every clinician who raised concerns.’

But the concerns were well-founded. In September 2001 a report into the NHS trust by the Commission of Health Improvement (CHI) found it to have a 60 per cent excess death rate, translating into 3,500 unexplained deaths, more than twice as many as those seen during the Mid Staffordshire scandal.

The CHI urged the trust to stop the overcrowding. That evening Loughton appeared on the news to deny any knowledge of patients being harmed as a result of overcrowding.

Short of accusing me of being a terrorist, anything they could think to throw at me they did — rape, sexual assault, fraud, tax evasion

Doctor Raj Mattu

‘I almost choked on my tea,’ says Dr Mattu. ‘I wrote to the Strategic Health Authority saying: “Will you please intervene.” I heard nothing.’ A week later, the trust received a zero star rating from the Department of Health. The BBC asked Dr Mattu to appear on the News. He spoke about the dangers of overcrowding and the campaign against him began.

Within months he was suspended on a trumped-up charge of bullying a member of his research team in February 2002 and accused of waging a campaign against Loughton.

‘From that moment I wasn’t allowed to contact anyone I worked with. It was so humiliating. Then, when I got home, there was just this emptiness and disbelief,’ he says.

‘I didn’t think in Britain, let alone the NHS, anyone could have the ability to misuse their authority in that way. I felt tearful, but I still had the confidence that he wouldn’t get away with it.

‘I had every faith the people in charge would properly investigate my concerns and see the management were putting people’s lives at risk.

‘But from the moment I whistle-blew the trust seemed determined to trash my reputation. I now realise it’s how they silence a whistleblower.

‘Short of accusing me of being a terrorist, anything they could think to throw at me they did — rape, sexual assault, fraud, tax evasion. I was investigated three times in four years by the Inland Revenue.

‘But the most hurtful allegations were the ones that made me out to be a sexual pervert.

‘I had no idea at the time what was being said about me. The charges were never put to me.

‘It wasn’t until many years later when documents were released to me during litigation that I discovered the trust had held secret meetings with the GMC during which they’d made these unforgivable claims.

‘The GMC began to investigate these allegations though the police.

‘In the end the West Midlands police got so fed up with the GMC inquiries they said: “There are no crime reference numbers, no reports. As far as we’re concerned, there is no incident. Why don’t you simply ask the doctor?” To this day I have not been provided with any details of these fabricated sexual attacks.

‘When I received these documents from the GMC shortly before they decided there was no case against me to answer in 2009, my heart sank. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

‘I thought, “How on earth do I tell Sangeeta?” She was very quiet then she said: “They’re some of the nastiest people I’ve ever come across. Why would they want to destroy you and your reputation in this way?” ’

Dr Mattu remained suspended for five-and-a-half years, one of the longest suspensions in NHS history.

It was finally lifted in July 2007 after he took the trust to the High Court. He eventually started reskilling in London in August 2008.

However, once the GMC closed his file the following March, the trust again looked for ways to get rid of him.

A memo, revealed here for the first time, from the HR director to the chief executive, dated April 23, 2009, shows them weighing up the ‘pros and cons’ of dismissing him.

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A tribunal ordered £.122m in damages once it was made clear Dr Mattu would never work again as a doctor. Above, the University Hospital in Coventry, which used to be called the Walsgrave Hospital

]]>https://drsanjaykumarsurgeon.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/brilliant-indian-surgeons-cannot-practice-in-uk-india/feed/0drsanjaykumarsurgeonDr Raj Mattu, pictured with his wife Sangita, has revealed how he was smeared by NHS bosses after he publicly revealed he was concerned about patient safety at Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry The 56-year-old, pictured on his wedding day, went public about overcrowding after the death of two patients at the hospitalDr Mattu pictured after blowing the whistle on the NHS failures. He was later labelled a pervert and rapist by bosses Dr Mattu racked up £1.4 million bills fighting the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, which will not reinstate himDr Mattu, pictured on his wedding day in the 90sA tribunal ordered £.122m in damages once it was made clear Dr Mattu would never work again as a doctor. Above, the University Hospital in Coventry, which used to be called the Walsgrave HospitalIndia doctor dismissed after whistle blowing – Indiahttps://drsanjaykumarsurgeon.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/india-doctor-dismissed-after-whistle-blowing-india/
https://drsanjaykumarsurgeon.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/india-doctor-dismissed-after-whistle-blowing-india/#respondSat, 16 Apr 2016 21:04:54 +0000http://drsanjaykumarsurgeon.wordpress.com/?p=3078Continue reading →]]>16 apr 2016

Prof Narinder Kapur was dismissed as a consultant neuropsychologist and head of neuropsychology at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge after voicing his concerns.

A tribunal ruled that he had been unfairly dismissed, yet he was never reinstated.

Amid growing concern over the treatment of those who try to raise safety fears, Sir David Nicholson, the head of the NHS, promised in March to personally intervene in cases where whistleblowers suffered harm to their careers.

Yet a letter discloses that when Mr Kapur pleaded for his help shortly after he made his pledge, Sir David wrote to him saying that although the hospital trust’s actions were unacceptable, there was nothing he could do.

Stephen Dorrell, chairman of the Commons Health Select Committee, said he was concerned about the allegations, and on Friday wrote to the trust’s chief executive to demand an explanation.

He said: “The committee has been doing a lot of work following the Francis inquiry [into appalling care at Mid Staffordshire foundation trust] about how to foster a more open culture, and how to make sure concerns can be raised and acted upon.

“I was very concerned to hear about this case because on the face of it, it raises very serious questions about what happens when attempts are made to examine safety risks”.

Prof Kapur, 63, who now works as visiting professor of neuropsychology at University College London, has now called for greater protection for people in his position.

“I raised my concerns about staff shortages and the impact on patient care several times to my line managers,” he said.

“I had a duty to do so on behalf of my patients, but I was repeatedly ignored by the hospital senior management.

“They refused to pay any attention to me. If that can happen to a professor like myself, with a worldwide reputation in his field, imagine what happens when more junior members of staff try to raise the alarm.”

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS trust (CUH) dismissed Prof Kapur in 2010, claiming there had been a breakdown in their relationship because of his management style and working methods.

It also suggested he had been involved in fraud involving hospital funds.

But last July an employment tribunal ruled that he had been unfairly dismissed.

The tribunal found the trust “did not conduct itself as a reasonable employer in this regard” and it condemned its attempt to accuse Prof Kapur of fraud.

In its judgment, the panel stated: “There is no question whatsoever of Dr Kapur doing anything other than manipulating a financial system in order to ensure that his patients’ best interests were fulfilled in circumstances where he was dissatisfied with the resources at his disposal.”

It added: “The tribunal condemns unreservedly the way in which the NHS has conducted itself in respect of this allegation. It proved unwilling to accept without some probing by the tribunal that the position was now closed and Dr Kapur was not found to be involved in activity that could be categorised as fraudulent.”

However, the tribunal found that Prof Kapur had not been sacked because of his whistle-blowing, but because there had been “an irredeemable breakdown in trust, confidence and communication” between him and other managers.

For that reason, the tribunal did not order the trust to reinstate him.

Prof Kapur claims that standards of care and patient safety at Addenbrooke’s appear not to have improved.

Sources have told him that in January, a section of a surgeon’s glove was left inside a patient after an operation. It is thought to have led to a potentially serious infection.

The professor claims that the hospital failed to report the incident to the regulatory authorities, as it is required to do. He has now reported it to the Care Quality Commission and Monitor, the health care regulator.

Furthermore, he claims there were eight similar cases — classed as “never events” — in 2011-12 alone.

Talking exclusively to The Telegraph, Prof Kapur said he was determined to continue speaking out on behalf of NHS whistleblowers.

He said: “Many whistle-blowers are forced to give up because it becomes so hard to continue. Some have nervous breakdowns or they can’t afford financially to carry on.

Some even kill themselves — and I’ve come close to that at times — because they appear to have no support against an aggressive employer.

“But I’m fortunate. I have the determination, the knowledge and the resources to be able to carry on. What’s more, I’ve got a moral imperative to stand up on behalf of other whistleblowers.”

Faced with raising £300,000 of tribunal costs, Prof Kapur had to sell his family’s home in Southampton. He has also had to cash in his pension.

He is bitter that his attempts to bring problems at Addenbrooke’s to light have been met with indifference — if not outright hostility — by some senior NHS managers.

In his letter, Sir David said that his hands were tied, as Addenbrooke’s and CUH were separate bodies from the Department of Health, and so responsible for their own employment arrangements.

“But unless people like me stand up and fight this injustice and unfairness things will never change,” he said.

A CUH spokesman said: “We completely disagree with Narinder Kapur’s assertions that the neuropsychology service is not providing a high-quality and safe service to our patients.

“Patient safety is at the heart of everything we do, and we are fully committed to and strongly encourage a culture of open reporting about any aspect of patient care.

“Although the tribunal found that the trust had not followed exactly the right procedure to dismiss Dr Kapur, it concluded that he would have been properly dismissed shortly afterwards and that 75 per cent of the responsibility for his dismissal lay with him.”

Addenbrooke’s said it had not experienced any “never events” since August last year and that it won the Dr Foster award for lower-than-expected mortality rates last year.

The trust said that because the fragment of glove found in the patient was so small, the incident was not preventable and did not qualify as a “never event”.

LONDON: An 84-year-old Indian-origin millionaire peer is facing an eight-month suspension from the House of Lords for breaching the British Parliament’s expense claim rules for the second time.

Lord Amir Bhatia was under investigation by the House of Lords Committee for Privileges and Conduct, which recommended his suspension in a report yesterday.

The report concluded: “The Commissioner found that Lord Bhatia had breached the House of Lords’ rules on financial support for members on 63 occasions from January to July 2010, claiming mileage expenses from the House of Lords while also claiming expenses for the same journeys from another organisation.

“The Commissioner also found that in submitting the claims Lord Bhatia had breached the Code of Conduct by failing to act on his personal honour.”

The report’s conclusions will now be taken up in the House of Lords next week for a formal decision on the suspension.

This is the second time Bhatia can be suspended over expenses irregularities, the first time in 2010 after he wrongly claimed 27,446 pounds in overnight allowances and mileage expenses.

The latest incident follows a television broadcast in December 2013 on ‘BBC Newsnight’, which alleged that Bhatia claimed and received mileage expenses from both the House of Lords and a charity he was involved with, the Ethnic Minority Foundation, in respect of the same journeys.

A complaint was made alleging that Lord Bhatia breached the House’s rules on financial support by such double claiming.

Lord Bhatia admitted to the Lords committee that he had wrongly claimed the mileage expenses from both bodies “due to a system not being in place in his office to prevent double-claiming”.

He said his claims were prepared by his long-standing personal assistant and he signed the forms she prepared. He apologised and offered to repay the money, the committee’s report notes.

The committee has recommended that he repay the 756 pounds he had wrongly claimed.

Lord Bhatia had appealed to the House of Lords against its findings, which was rejected and the final report released this week.

“This is Lord Bhatia’s second case of breach of the House’s rules on financial support for members – Lord Bhatia in October 2010 was found to have misused the system of financial support for members by wrongly designating his main residence and claiming overnight allowance and mileage expenses accordingly from October 2007 to January 2009, amounting to 27,466 pounds, for which he was suspended from the House for eight months,” the committee noted.

Lord Bhatia is a millionaire businessman who entered the House of Lords as a cross-bench peer in 2001.

The Ismaili Muslim of Indian-origin was born in East Africa and studied in Tanzania and India.

In 5 Minutes, He Lets the Blind See

He has restored eyesight to more than 100,000 people, perhaps more than any doctor in history, and still his patients come. They stagger and grope their way to him along mountain trails from remote villages, hoping to go under his scalpel and see loved ones again.

A day after he operates to remove cataracts, he pulls off the bandages – and, lo! They can see clearly. At first tentatively, then jubilantly, they gaze about. A few hours later, they walk home, radiating an ineffable bliss.

Dr. Sanduk Ruit, a Nepali ophthalmologist, may be the world champion in the war on blindness. Some 39 million people worldwide are blind – about half because of cataracts – and another 246 million have impaired vision, according to the World Health Organization.

If you’re a blind person in a poor country, then traditionally you have no hope. But Ruit has pioneered a simple cataract microsurgery technique that costs only $25 per patient and is virtually always successful. Indeed, his “Nepal method” is now taught in U.S. medical schools.

I’m on my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a university student with me on a trip to the developing world to cover underreported issues. The student, Austin Meyer of Stanford University, and I traveled to Hetauda in southern Nepal to watch Ruit perform his magic on 102 men and women.

One patient was Thuli Maya Thing, a woman of 50 who says she has struggled to look after her children since losing her sight to cataracts in the last few years. Because of her blindness and inability to work, the family sometimes goes hungry.

So Thuli Maya was waiting outside the eye hospital that Ruit has established here, nervous but also eager with anticipation. “I will be able to see my children and husband again – that’s what I look forward to most,” she said.

She was led to the operating theater, and her eyes were injected with local anesthetic. After hoisting her left eye wide open with an eyelid speculum, Ruit peered through a microscope as he made a tiny incision in her eyeball and then tugged out the cataract – and placed it in my palm. It was hard and yellowish, perhaps a third of an inch in diameter, a tiny opaque disk that had devastated Thuli Maya’s life.

Ruit inserted a tiny new lens into the eye and he was done. The process took just five minutes. Then he repeated the process for Thuli Maya’s right eye, confident that she would see again.

“Here, the returns are so clear,” Ruit said as he bandaged her eye. “It’s like no other medical intervention.”

In the United States, cataract surgery is typically performed with complex machines. But these are unaffordable in poor countries, so Ruit built on the work of others (including the Aravind Eye Care System in India, a superb institution that performed 280,000 cataract surgeries last year) to pioneer and refine small-incision microsurgery to remove cataracts without sutures.

At first, skeptics denounced or mocked his innovations. But then the American Journal of Ophthalmology published a study of a randomized trial finding that Ruit’s technique had exactly the same outcome (98 percent success at a six-month follow-up) as the Western machines. One difference was that Ruit’s method was much faster and cheaper.

“The results are fantastic,” said Dr. Geoffrey Tabin, an eye specialist at the University of Utah’s Moran Eye Center. Tabin learned the technique from Ruit and was in Hetauda as well, removing cataracts beside Ruit, and he says the results in rural Nepal using this technique are as good as those of his patients in Salt Lake City paying for first-class care and benefiting from almost $1 million in the latest medical equipment.

Tabin said that when machines can’t be used for cataract surgery in the United States (if, for example, the cataract is too large), the standard American manual surgical technique is inferior to Ruit’s.

Tabin, a mountain climber whose interest in Nepal was sparked by summiting Mount Everest, leads the Himalayan Cataract Project, a U.S. charity that supports Ruit’s work and takes its techniques to other countries, like Ethiopia and Ghana. The battle against global blindness is now a joint Ruit/Tabin project, and they optimistically named their website CureBlindness.org.

“Dr. Ruit was the first doctor to put lenses in poor persons in the developing world,” Tabin said. “Nobody has restored sight to as many people.”

By Ruit’s count, which others find credible, he has conducted 120,000 cataract surgeries, mostly on a single eye of a patient. But Ruit developed not just a surgical technique but an entire eye care system. He founded the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology, which includes hospitals, outreach clinics and training programs and an eye bank, using fees from better-off patients to support impoverished ones like Thuli Maya. Tilganga conducts eye surgery on 30,000 patients annually – half for a fee, half gratis.

Tilganga also manufactures 450,000 tiny lenses a year for use in cataract surgery, keeping costs to $3 a lens compared with $200 in the West. The quality seems excellent, and they are exported to 50 countries, some in Europe. And for those who lose an eye, Tilganga makes realistic-looking prosthetics that cost $3, compared with $150 for an imported false eye.

This system impresses experts around the world. Dr. David F. Chang, a past president of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, describes Ruit as “one of the most important ophthalmologists in the world.”

Ruit, 61, who grew up in a remote part of northeastern Nepal and studied medicine in India, is now taking his model to other low-income countries.

“If we can do this in Nepal, it can be done anywhere in the world,” he said.

One reason to focus on vision on a win-a-trip journey: Blindness is both extremely debilitating and often easy to overcome or prevent. Vitamin A capsules cost 2 cents each and can prevent 250,000 or more cases of child blindness each year (half of those children die within a year of going blind). Blinding trachoma can be prevented with improved hygiene and donated antibiotics. River blindness is on its way out in part because of the heroic work of Jimmy Carter and medicine donated by Merck. And cataracts – we’ll, let’s pick up with Thuli Maya.

A day after the surgery, she and the 101 other patients were ready to have their bandages removed. Ruit carefully pulled off Thuli Maya’s eye patches, and she blinked a couple of times – and took in her surroundings for the first time in years. She beamed as her eyesight was tested; it came out 20/20.

“I used to get around by crawling,” Thuli Maya said through her smiles, “and now I can get up and walk.”

Readers often tell me of their doubts about humanitarian aid, and it’s true that helping people is always harder than it looks. But sometimes it’s almost miraculous: A $25 surgery, say $50 for both eyes, to restore a person’s sight. “This is such high impact, for so little money,” Ruit said as he watched his patients adjusting to sight again.

An Indian-origin doctor has received the honorary fellowship by one of the leading British Universities for his contribution to the community as a general practitioner and medical educator. 77-year-old Shiv Pande has been awarded an honorary fellowship of the University of Central Lancashire. “Rarely has a medical doctor achieved so much in so many areas, not only within his own profession, but also in our broader community. As a dedicated medical practitioner, tireless charity campaigner, accomplished broadcaster and distinguished academic, Shiv Pande MBE represents a superb role model for any citizen of multicultural Britain,” said Michael Thomas, University’s Vice Chancellor. “I have enjoyed working as National Health Service General Practitioner, Justice of Peace, Broadcaster, charity worker all these years.

My work at General Medical Council took me a lot to London but happy to say as a past Treasurer of GMC, I was quietly pleased when we all at GMC decided to move it’s office and majority of work to Northwest in Manchester,” Pande, who is also a member of the Indian Journalists Association, said. Pande was presented the award at Preston Guildhall by The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) to commemorate his lifelong help for local people but previously received an MBE from the Queen in 1989 for his community work, the University said in a statement. A Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) is awarded by the Queen for a significant achievement or outstanding service to the community.

Born and educated in India, Pande obtained his MBBS and Ms (General Surgery) degrees in India before moving to the UK in 1971 where he worked in cardio-thoracic surgery at London Chest Hospital, Broad Green Hospital and Fazakerley Hospital, Liverpool until 1974. In 1975 he entered general practice, eventually retiring in 2005 after 30 years.

DON: The maximum number of doctors sacked in the UK over the last five years is from India, Britain’s General Medical Council (GMC) has revealed.

In the past five years, one out of every 250 doctors of Indian origin lost their job. Data shows that doctors working in UK but trained in India are four times more likely to lose their job.

Since 2009, 117 doctors trained in India and Pakistan have been barred from working in Britain. India is followed by Pakistan, Egypt and Nigeria.
In 2013 alone, 75% of doctors who were struck off came to UK from foreign shores. In total, 458 doctors have been barred from working in the UK in the past five years.

The findings come days after British researchers called for making tests taken by foreign doctors who want to work in the NHS to be made harder to pass as half of all foreign doctors in Britain do not have the necessary skills to work here.

The University College London said they found a performance gap between international and UK medical graduates and has suggested raising the pass mark from 63 to 76%.

More than 95,000 foreign-trained doctors work in the UK, making up a quarter of the total number, majority of them being Indians.

The British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) had recently dragged both the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) which conducts the exam and the General Medical Council (GMC) which is accountable for ensuring a fair process to Court alleging that UK based trainee GPs from Indian background were four times more likely to fail this assessment and international medical graduates were 16 times more likely to fail the exam than their white counterparts despite having successfully completed the same stringent training process up to this point. BAPIO lost the case.